American Tabloid [Import] [Hardcover]

James Ellroy (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Century; First Edition edition (1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 071264816X
• ISBN-13: 978-0712648165
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (134 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,351,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed L.A. Qurtet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the Underworld USA trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover. He is the author of one work of non-fiction, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Years Later This Book Haunts Me, August 18, 2004

By 

Reviewer X (Las Vegas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Tabloid: A Novel (Paperback)

I am not going to recap the book because after 110 reviews I am sure that has been done to death. I am just going to give you my opinion on this book I read about ten years ago.

When I was in college I picked up this book completely as a fluke. It looked interesting, I am big into history and the book jacket peaked my interest. From the first moment I started to read I couldn't put it down. I carried it to the kitchen five hours later while I threw together a sandwich and read while the bread toasted. I read all night and into the next day. I blew off my classes. I didn't do anything else but read. When I was done that afternoon I was not exhausted as one would think. I was exhilarated. This book is so well written, so complex, so dark, so funny, so much more than the average book I was physically excited.

Over the next few months my friends read it and each one read it with the same kind of fervor I did. People who hated to read loved this book.

READ IT! BUY IT! Do not hesitate. If you love a good book then you will completely flip out over this one! It is truly an amazing book and one of the best pieces of fiction ever. I cannot tell you strong enough how wonderful this treasure is for someone who loves to read. It is a perfectly written novel.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Mayhem, July 5, 2002

By 

Richard Wells (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Tabloid: A Novel (Paperback)

Cops act like criminals, criminals act like cops, and the twain collides and melds over and over again. There are no good guys in "American Tabloid," just guys who are mired in various levels of corruption. Ankle deep, waist deep, and in over their heads. One of the lessons James Ellroy gives us is that once you've touched your toe to the muck it will eventually suck you down. Redemption may present itself, but Ellroy's characters are so far around the bend that even good things are done for all the wrong reasons. In an introduction Mr. Ellroy tells us he's going to create the new myth of the Camelot years - the dark myth - and he succeeds admirably.

In the tautest prose between covers we follow a handful of near and complete psychopaths as their lives intersect through John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, and his 1000 day reign. Big shots and underlings alike. Their machinations are complex, and almost always involve extortion, but solutions are often simple - a beating for a lesson, a bullet to the head for the more recalcitrant. But why stop there when torture, and dismemberment are so fulfilling. The lead characters suffer, but except for one ex-Jesuit seminarian become FBI agent, become mob lawyer, the suffering is physical rather than existential, and it's so much easier to deal with a migraine than a crisis of conscience.

"American Tabloid," for all the horror contained therein, is one of the best books I've read in the past five years. It's right up there with Cormack McCarthy's "Border Trilogy," but where McCarthy can go sentimental, James Ellroy never lets up.

41 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blistering,paranoid and brilliant, April 26, 2001

By 

A. Hogan (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Tabloid: A Novel (Paperback)

James Ellroy writes "hard boiled" fiction. If you hard boil an egg for about a week,perhaps. Ellroy inhabits a world all his own in crime literature. Having somehow survived a childhood from dantes seventh circle, he grew up to write these angry books where the bad guys are powerful white men{thinking of inherent power structures, he's quite correct}.American tabloid tells the story ,in all its vainglorious insanity, of that sweet time in Americana called "Camelot". This riveting novel actually is a meditation on power, who has it, and what it does. Betrayal{Bay of Pigs, Kennedy blowing off a CIA agent, everybody BUT the Kennedy's racking Marilyn Monoroe, J edgar Hoover, Joe Kennedy, Howard Hughes} all amke appearances leading to Dealy Plaza. s always, Ellroys descriptive powers are unmatched in describing viloence{the Cuban cab front company has some interesting moments}, and no one, no one, comes off as good in this. A profoundly disturbing book, a meditation on power, America, and who really runs things.One of our better writers in any genre has written another would be classic. Very very well done . Highest recommendation.